Simon Hargreaves - Maxwell Cooper and the Legend of Inini-Makwa

by Simon Hargreaves

Copyright 2021 by Simon Hargreaves

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published 2021

Cover design by Casey Gerber

Interior design by Karina Granda

For information:

simonhargreavesauthor.com

Hardcover: 979-8-9851213-1-5

Paperback: 979-8-9851213-0-8

eBook: 979-8-9851213-2-2

Audiobook (to come): 979-8-9851213-3-9

To Brooks and all the kids at the resort.

Friday

Chapter One

Anything That Can Go Wrong...

T he first time it happened was two weeks before the end of seventh grade. Third period. Life Sciences. Mr. Dobberke was droning on about cumulonimbus clouds and it just popped up, a rigid tent in the crotch of Maxs Levis. At least then the denim was stiff enough to press everything flat. At least then he had textbooks to use as a shield when the bell rang and everyone filed out of class. At least then it happened for no real reasonjust another in the long line of puberty-related catastrophes like pimples and squeaky voices and hair growing in places it shouldnt.

The second time, three months later, Max was somewhere outside Blue Harbor, Michigan, asleep on a lumpy bed in a single-story motel called Rest Inn. He was dreaming, strolling across a solar-paneled walkway that looped around force field enclosurescages meant to contain the samples of life collected by some ancient alien race.

To his right, one of these cages housed a palm tree with purple fronds and green bark. Clinging to it, glaring at Max from around the trunk, was a creature no larger than a squirrel. It had six legs and a tail twice as long as its body. It bounced forward and chirped a high-pitched bark before scampering back around the tree and out of sight.

In the next cage over, snow fell from impenetrable blackness and was being trampled, packed into a surface as hard as concrete, by a white behemoth. The creature could have been a bear but was so thin Max could count each of its ribs. It stalked back and forth on hind legs, huffing, panting, snorting as though it had raced a great distance after some wily prey only to be skunked at the last moment.

Farther down, a bridge hovered over a paddock where blue and pink unicorns cantered around each other and scraped their horns along rough, flat rocks, sharpening them to fine points before facing off one another in combat.

The cell to Maxs left, howeverthe one with the sign in front that read Human , the one with the deep shadows under giant fir and spruce trees, the one with the naked woman sitting in the dirt and pine needles half hidden by those shadows, her legs crossed, her arms at her sides, her black hair hanging low across her breaststhat cell held Maxs full attention.

The womans skin was the rich brown of Coca-Cola, and Max had to squint into the darkness to separate her from the shadow. Beads of sweat glistened on her top lip, down her neck, into her cleavage, the way a cold glass of Coke condensed on a hot afternoon.

Maybe it was the way her eyes glinted like marbles shining in the sun, pupils big as dimes following his every move. Maybe it was the sneer that pulled up one corner of her lips and offered Max a glimpse of crooked, jagged teeth stuffed to the gums with gray, rotting, undigested flesh. Maybe it was the low growl rumbling deep in her chestthe animal kingdoms universal sign to stay away, to keep on walking.

Maxs legs trembled.

His fingers were icicles.

His lungs compressed as if a belt had wrapped around him and pulled itself tight.

With a mind of their own, his feet pushed a step backward.

Then another.

The woman rose, floating to her feet. Her legs unfolded like the crossbeams on a scissor lifta single fluid motion. She stepped forward, her chin lifted away from her chest, her shoulders pulled back, her nostrils wide as if shed caught a whiff of fresh meat, her next meal.

With each step she touched down onto the balls of her feet, her calves bunched into tight knots, her hair whispering against her flesh.

With each step, Maxs own feet betrayed him. Their cowardice pushed him back until his shoulders pressed against something smooth and hard behind him.

There was a tinny beep, a soft hiss, a gentle pop, and the force field over the womans cell flashed white before it disappeared.

She leapt from the shadows and landed on all fours six feet from Max.

In half a breath she was on him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders. Her legs coiled around his waist. Calloused fingers wove through his hair and pushed the back of his headpushed until his face rested between the soft flesh of her breasts. The acrid tang of her sweat filled his nostrils. The growl rattling from deep within her chest vibrated through his brain, filled his ears, drowned away every sound until she spoke.

Max.

Fast as a gasp, the zoo disappeared. The six-legged squirrel, the scrawny white bear creature, the unicorns, gone with a single word. Even the dark-skinned woman.

Her arms and legs wrapped around his body became a tangle of sheets from the lumpy motel bed.

Her breasts once cradling his head were now nothing but two rough pillows sandwiching his face.

The reek of her sweat was little more than the stench of his own morning breath collected between those pillows and recycling through his nostrils with each breath.

Her voicethe husky, rasping growlwas now his mothers mellifluous exasperation hovering over him, demanding he get out of bed.

His skull was numb, as though it was crammed full of cotton, as if his mind couldnt reconcile the sudden shift in reality. As if it believed the zoo had been the real world, and this cheap motel was the dream.